Penfold

That sucks...sorry man :S.

Internet trouble?

Cool, good to know the bruising didn't happen because of a terrible flaw in my form or something . Thanks! The video is awesome, btw. You may have already answered this, but how long have you been doing gymnastics for? Seeing those sorts of things makes me wish I had been involved in gymnastics in my youth, though I'm definitely glad I can at least start incorporating those elements into workouts now.

Awesome, thanks man! So, by having the rings turned out, does that mean at a support your hand are on the inside of the rings with thumb side forward (that's how I would find myself)? As a side note, I'm thinking I have my elbows out too far or something, based on the nice bruises just above my elbows I woke up to this morning . Either that or I just have to get used to that contact with the webbing. When I do the WOD at lunch today, I'll definitely try playing with the false grip...probably do false grip pullups during my warmup or something. I also wanna try playing with some other stuff on rings (I had seen some pushup variations that look like fun), but time might be a little short today. I'll also definitely be looking at the planche progressions, since I'd really like to start working up to those.

Noticed the flashing blue light this morning as I was getting ready to go to work, and found the Nintendo Channel is now available. I understand that it's supposed to let your Wii work basically as a DS download station, though I didn't have time to check it out (I also couldn't even open the channel because apparently my Wii is too full...dammit Nintendo, I want my increased storage options now! ). Should be kinda cool, since I don't think I've taken my DS to a download station pretty much since the first month of owning it but it'd be nice to play some new demos.

A few ideas: pushups, situps, squats, burpees, box jumps (if you have a bench or something that you can use that would be stable to jump on and off), pullups (if you have something on which you can do them...if you've got a bar, then there's lots more things you can do, but probably not), lunges, running...all great stuff you can do with little to no equipment. I feel compelled to say, though, try to mix up what you do so you're not doing the exact same thing every day I'll also refer you to a previous post I made regarding tabats. Stretches I'm not well versed in (though I've been thinking getting into some yoga after the STP this year), so I can't give great advice there beyond just general joint mobility, or stretches specific to aikido .

Rings arrived today :D:D:D (thanks again Geoffrey Taucer for the link!!). It was perfect timing, since today's WOD prescribed ring dips. First time in my adult life I've been on rings, and at least as far as dips were concerned it wasn't nearly as taxing as I've been lead to believe. Subbing 2 bar dips for 1 ring dip seems a little...excessive now that I've experienced it. Anyway...bad news is that I don't have a place at the gym to hang them far enough off the ground to do a muscle up without risking smacking my head on a bar. At the highest point I could only hang them about as far off the ground as when I had a grip on them my arms would make a 90 degree angle, which meant in order to hang off them full extention I had to fully tuck my legs and I still barely hovered above the floor. I found that in this configuration at least, I can't do a muscle-up (also meaning I can't do a strict muscle-up yet). I'm fairly certain I could do a kipping, but I don't have a spot yet where I can test the theory. Jumping muscle-ups, for whatever that's worth, I can do with relative ease. I tried lessening the jump, in order to target that transition point between the pullup and dip components, and maybe I kept aiming just a little high but often found myself at least a little below a low dip and was able to press to full extention. Did 30 in total after the WOD, but broken them up quite a lot. So, this brings me to my point. Geoffrey Taucer, when you do muscle-ups, do you usually do them with pretty strict form? My second question might tough to answer, but I'm still trying to wrap my mine around the form/hand position...could I ask you to explain a little bit about the false grip? I guess I'm still tring to figure out what the aim of it is as well. Thanks again, man. Also saw a youtube of planche pushups for the first time and I have to say, how on earth does someone even start training for those?? Totally crazy, but oh so cool. EDIT: Awesome sig, Steben. Would you mind if I borrowed that?

Yay. I've wanted to play this game, so after however long it takes Nintendo to post it I'll finally get to! EDIT: Boo, still no esrb rating for anything Mega Man or Majora's Mask for Wii, so I guess some other games I'm most hoping for on VC aren't even in the pipeline yet.

So, it sounds like a storage solution for the Wii may be under way. Really hoping something comes out soon, what with WiiWare launching in the US in the very near future.

Picked this up on Tuesday night, but didn't get a chance to play until yesterday. I was becoming a little skeptical of the how good this game was going to be when I read some reviews, but that only set me up to be pleasantly suprised when I sat down with it. I heard someone comparing it to Mario Kart DS, and I'd agree with that. I really liked Mario Kart DS, and in a lot of ways this feels similar to me. I was also fairly happy that the Wii Wheel works well, and it's been fun to use. I've only played most of the 50cc so far so I'm not very far in at this point, but I'm looking forward to playing more, especially playing with friends (haven't gotten to yet, but that's part of my plan for this weekend).

WOW, 99 on Metacritic right now. I've never really had much interest in these games, but seeing these sorta reviews...

Sorry for the late response...I'm usually only on here at work, and yesterday I was stuck downtown all day. In recently starting to train a couple friends who aren't yet ready for something like Crossfit, I was asked this same question - "How often should I be doing this excercise?" My response has been just try starting with any one workout one workout day a week, but continue to mix different things in. Once it becomes routine, the benefits are slowly lost. In the case of tabatas, I'd say once a week is good when you're doing different things on those other days you work out. Another good combination for tabatas you might wanna try is rowing machine, push press, sumo deadlight high pull, and box jumps. If you don't have a rowing machine in proximity, you could try medicine ball cleans or burpees instead. Hope that helps. For me, as a Crossfitter, I don't do the same workout very often, in fact it's rare for a single workout to appear twice in a 2-month period (though I can recall of one instance where we got a WOD appear twice within 2 weeks of each other). It's almost counterintuitive (and this is where the average gym junkie will get lost when it comes to CF), but by doing different excercises instead of a routine, when you come back to any given excercise you will inevitably be able to complete it faster and/or with a heavier load. Yeah, that's what I hear. As far as dips go, I'm probably as close to that transition point as I can get on bars (I go down to the point where I start running into my own body, so I'm physically unable to get lower), but I'll start utilizing a higher range of motion on strict pullups (bar to chest). Awesome advice, btw, thanks again! I'm also ordering my rings after work today, can't wait!

Thanks for the link! I've been pretty lazy about buying myself set of rings, but I just need to bite the bullet...it gets really time consuming to do 2 bar dips or pullups in the place of one on the rings. Plus, I really wanna try muscle-ups - been subbing 4 pullups and 4 dips per muscle-up, but I have a feeling that doesn't reasonably prepare me for them. My stock answer is Crossfit, but it's all about motivation/workout intensity and it's definitely not for everybody. If you feel like you can do it, though, going once every other day will definitely get you the results you want (and like I said in my previous post, a WOD [workout of the day] should last you at most 40 minutes). It can also be scaled down to your current fitness level, so the workouts shouldn't be out of reach because of too great a load. It's one idea. Another is to do more workouts that simply use your body weight. One example off the top is as follows: on a continuously running clock, do one pullup the first minute, two the second minutes, three the third, etc until you are no longer able to complete the prescribed number of pullups in the alotted time. Outside of Crossfit or Gymnastics, people don't tend to be pullup monsters, so for the average person you can sub with jumping pullups (or kipping pullups if you've got your form) instead of trying to do 14 minutes' worth of deadhang PUs. A third idea is to do tabatas. The usual tabata workout that I've done involve four excercises - pullups, pushups, situps, and air squats (squats done without any extra weight). The idea is you do 8 rounds per excercise, and each round lasts exactly 30 seconds - 20 seconds where you're performing the excercise as intensely as you can do, and the remaining 10 seconds are rest. Aside from those last 10 seconds there are are no rests between rounds nor excercises...so it's another "continuous clock" workout. It's 16 minutes of hell, but it's a great metabolic conditioning workout. The best part about tabatas is that you can do it with ANYTHING (running, rows, benchpress, cleans, you name it), but it works best I think with 4 excercises total. If you want some more ideas of single workouts to try, just lemme know. Olympic lifts . Also try doing thrusters (front squat with which you continue the motion as you reach full leg extension to bring the bar overhead...it looks like front squat + press, but it's all one motion), overhead squats, back squats, box jumps, burpees, wallball shots (if you have at least a 12-lb med ball and a wall at least 12-ft tall you can throw it at), or lunges (with or without weight overhead). For abs, try doing knees-to-elbows or L-pullups. If you need clarification on any of these, lemme know...or better yet, check out the demo videos. Btw, in my opinion, if you're already in good shape there's no reason to wait to be in top form before beginning training in self-defense.

I'm a huge supporter of people getting into shape, and I'm really glad to see the first post includes both diet and excercise. A lot of people just concentrate on one, but it's making it way harder on themselves without looking at all the different aspects. Lemme offer some advice before you guys get started, but first I'll give you a little background on where I'm coming from. I'm 5'10" or so, and I used to be 200lbs of bulk (very strong in that standard gym junkie, bench-press way), and during this time my workouts lasted 1-2 hours and were all anaerobic. Sometime after I got back into endurance cycling, I dropped the gym altogether for a few months to concentrate on distance training (taking 4-6 hour rides every other day). Coming back to the gym, I changed my workout style to be slightly more varied with a lot more cardio mixed with lifting. At this point, my workouts went from lasting about an hour and a half to in the end taking 3 hours. I lost a lot of bulk (didn't quite have the cuts I was after) but was feeling like I had plateaued in several areas, since my body got too used to the routine. Later in speaking with a friend's cousin who is a former Army Ranger-turned instructor at a nearby base, I was turned on to Crossfit and I've been on that program for about 6 months now. I'm now 154lbs of lean muscle, and am all cuts and definition. The funny thing to me is my warm-ups now (3 rounds of 10 45-lb overhead squat, 10 GHS situps, 10 pullups, and 10 dips) would have easily been a full workout back in my old bulky form. My workout now lasts at most 40 minutes, and I'm consistently floored by them, which exemplifies my love for this sytem. My bench press weight (often times the metric used with gym junkies) has certainly gone down since my bulk days, but everything else is stronger and my overall athleticism hasn't been higher. I'm again in training for the Seattle to Portland bike ride, my goal for which is 13 hours. Anyway, a little advice... -1- Diet, like I said above, is really important. It creates the foundation on which we can be involved with athletic activity. There are different thoughts floating around regarding what the right ratios and the right caloric intake is, but since it's my primary fitness program I follow the Crossfit nutrition guidelines. That said, even when you're training hardcore, you can't always stick 100% to your nutrition plan, so don't feel too bad about the occassional slip. -2- DON'T START TRAINING EVERY DAY! You will either burn out, or your workout intensity will be so vastly reduced that you'll get nearly nothing out of it. Even when you're training hardcore, you NEED rest days, not just to let your body recover, but so you can mentally keep pushing yourself during your workouts. Overtraining can be a real problem. -3- Don't get stuck in a routine. You'll notice immediate results no matter what you start with, but here's the problem - if you're doing a routine, your body gets used to being taxed in that fashion and your result will lessen over time. If you keep mixing it up, you keep the body guessing so you'll continue to maintain good results (assuming you also have a proper diet to support this). By mixing it up I don't mean, "Monday is legs, Tuesday is triceps and chest, Wed is biceps..." That's a good way to build bulk and plateau, and if that's your goal that's fine. Having been there and done that, though, I'd never go back to it. -4- Finally, one last piece of advice I'll offer right now is don't lose heart or be intimidated. It's easy when you start out to go to the gym and see big bad muthas, and become intimidated of working out next to them. Honestly, it doesn't matter. Most people don't judge others (though they probably internally evaluate them on a relative scale, not with mal-intent), and anyone who does is a fuck. I'm certainly an available resource for anyone who has questions. Also, Geoffrey Taucer, yay for rings!!

Cool, thanks man!

Quick question - has anyone played Metal Gear: Portable Ops? How is it? The MG Acid games don't seem terribly exciting to me, but Portable Ops sounds like it could be interesting.

Hmm, this is potentially disconcerting new: Retro Studios Lead Designer, Engineer, and Art Director leave the company. Not sure what their future projects will be, but I wonder if they're going to be so atmospheric and engaging without these individuals. EDIT: Maybe it's just me, but looking at the "artwork redemption" (which, I agree with Effector, it's extremely fitting ), it's kinda funny that their thumbnail version for the "redesigned original cover art" looks to still have the IGN logo .

I still haven't finished the game, but I have to absolutely agree!

I agree, which is exactly why I got the 360 version. At the time I didn't have a computer capable of running it...though now that I do, I won't bother rebuying it since I got it exclusively for Portal.

Off-topic I know, but I'd be really interested in hearing how Maverick Hunter X is. MMX was probably my favorite entry in the X series for various reasons, so I've been curious how the remake stacks up.

I'll be picking this up later today. I'm really excited for it, especially the battle system, though I'm still not even halfway through Okami and don't want to start anything new until I'm finished with that. Another incomplete I'll be adding to backloggery .

Sure enough, that fixed it...thanks again, man. Now that I'm not swinging around like an idiot, the battles are significantly more enjoyable. The funny thing with getting that 4 hit reflector combo for me is I would either mess up the timing on the 2nd hit or I would get all 4 (at least at the dojo when I purchased it). Great game so far.

That might explain it...I just swung around like crazy, without particulary trying to time anything beyond the first hit (and sometimes not even that...after all, it worked in Twilight Princess ). Thanks for this suggestion, I'll try it as well.

Cool, thanks man. I was thinking that might be the case, since it didn't make much sense for the action's momentum to break so much. Maybe my movements aren't exaggerated enough or something...at any rate, I'll figure it out tonight.

So, first time playing Okami, and for the most part it's been awesome so far. The only thing that's been bugging me is that combat doesn't seem to flow. Almost every time I attack normally, I can attack one time then several seconds go by before I can attack again. I miss that whole "three hit combo" I'm used to from Zelda games, though having just played through Kingdom Hearts 2 it's made battles seem that much choppier. Am I doing something wrong, is the game not picking up my control waggle, or is that just how this game is?